Racks and Stacks - Cut

In the Racks and Stacks series, Cody discusses the comic books he has been reading.

Abducted by a bloodsucker!

The comic book publisher Dark Horse Comics was founded in by Mike Richardson in 1986, and it was Richardson himself who wrote the 2007 horror graphic novel Cut, with penciler Todd Herman, inker Al Milgrom, colorist Dave Stewart, and letterer Nate Piekos (credited as Blambot’s Nate Piekos) bringing Richardon’s story to life on the page.

Although the story takes more than 100 pages to play out, it’s very simple: when a young woman named Meagan catches her boyfriend cheating on her in one of the backrooms at a club, they – and the girl he was hooking up with – have a blow-out fight that ends with Meagan getting cut by some broken glass. When she steps outside, she’s abducted by some kind of monstrous, flying creature. She loses consciousness and wakes to find that she’s being kept captive in an isolated house in the countryside where every window and door has been boarded up from the inside.

Also held captive with Meagan is another young woman, Anita, who sustained a cut on her leg during a night shift at a grocery store. When she left the store, she was also grabbed by that flying creature… and now, Meagan bears witness as that bat-monster regularly comes into their room to suck blood from Anita’s throat. This thing is a vampire, but it’s no Dracula or Lestat. It’s a monster of unknown origin, and these girls have to find a way to escape from it.

And that’s all there is to this graphic novel. Meagan and Anita are abducted and terrorized, and Meagan has to make a desperate escape attempt once Anita has also become a vampire.

It’s an interesting set-up that I could see working well as a horror movie. I don’t think there’s enough content here to sustain an entire film, but it could either be expanded upon, or it could be a segment in an anthology film. Either way, there is one area that would require some serious work: the ending. In graphic novel form, Cut ends with such a shrug that it almost made me wonder why I even bothered to read the book in the first place.

But I enjoyed the ride getting to that ending. The story drew me in and I was eager to see where it was going to go. It didn’t really go anywhere, but that didn’t ruin the experience.

Note: Marvel Comics will not be covered in Racks and Stacks articles, as they have their own article series.